


Podfic Journal: musings on the process

by Kess



Category: Meta - Fandom, Podfic Fandom
Genre: Gen, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Meta, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21543361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kess/pseuds/Kess
Summary: commentary, thoughts, and discussion on the podfic process of one Kess Podficcer
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	1. an introduction

I always seem to have more feelings about a podfic, or my podficcing process, than I feel comfortable adding to to the original postings of my pods. I tend to run long, and ramble a bit, and then my postings read like one of those recipes blogs where the author tells you all about how this home made vegan apple compote reminds them of their late grandmother's back garden in the autumn time at dusk. Beautiful, nice, where's the recipe (or in this case, the sound file)? So I've created this work to put all those messy thoughts down.

I also have a few feelings about my learning process, what went right in some podfics, what went wrong, what I'll be looking to improve etc etc.

This is very much an experimental work, and I have no idea how it will go!


	2. Podfic of Borrowed Time by CaesarVulpes

Vital statistics:  
[Link to podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21543049)  
12MB  
00:17:54

In a lot of ways, this feels like an odd work to start this little project with. I started the podfic yesterday, did absolutely nothing special with it, and then posted it today. But it also feels right to start with this one.

So! Lets start dissecting! (and I'll try to keep it non fandom specific)

The main reason I chose to record this pod is somewhat shallow, but understandable I think. I left a comment on one of the author's other works (compliments, things I liked about the fic. I'd say "the usual", but there's no _usual_ when it comes to liking fic. Each has something new and wonderful to appreciate), and he responded with "thanks, I like your podfic" (but with more exclamation marks).

It made my day.

I read that reply yesterday morning, and I've been coasting on it ever since.

I recorded in unusual hours for me, in the morning when one wakes up, rather than in the morning when one should be asleep. My newly built recording fort (a blanket over a desk, surrounded by pillows) has...done it's job. It's very odd to hear my voice coming back to me without the usual background noise I've come to take for granted, the echo of a room, the faint, just about unnoticeable, ticking of a clock.

This is also one of the flagship recordings for Will, my new microphone. He’s a rode something something (NT-1? For the amount of research I did before buying, one would think I’d remember more than just his name), and he’s much more sensitive than Justice, my previous mic (a blue snowball). There’s a bit of a learning curve here for me, a few settings I need to play with, learning proper mic positioning.

I found that my breaths weren’t nearly audible enough on these settings, and it diluted some of the intensity of the smut. Hearing those breaths, though, is something that I’ll have to weigh up against the intense clarity of my microphone, and how it makes each breath sound crystal clear even when I don’t want them to be. Podfic buddy Cain has mentioned previously about breath control in relation to rode microphones, and I think that will be something I pick up over time. Or get them to teach me. Whichever.

I was a tad bit too close to the mic in this fic, I think. The P’s pop a bit too much for my liking. This can probably be solved by having proper posture, a wild and radical thought.

(also forgot to do my nasal sprays beforehand. It’s less obvious than I’d feared)

  
  


And now that we’ve been over the things slated for Improvement, here are some things that I quite enjoyed:

  
  


My narration in this is a bit good! My cadence is nice. And while the lack of background noise was originally odd, listening back on my phone, it sounds really good.

Peter sounds borderline unbearable, which was the goal! So I like that.

There were a few lines that I definitely delivered in a different way than I first read them. A few of Jon’s lines, I think? I originally read the lines in quite a confident manner, but the I thought it would be more fun if I made those lines a bit hesitant.

  
  


And now, the cover art!  
  


  
  


The photo is, as always, sourced from a royalty free site. I don’t know why I make sure to have the photos be royalty free, and then I go and use non-royalty free songs but... yeah. I do that.

Finding the picture is always a bit of an ordeal, and this was no different. The concept for this cover was “a desk that you could fuck over”, and I found many good desks to fuck over! They were also not good to use as covers, many of them with settings that wouldn't work for the podfic in question, or without a background at all. I wanted a bit of a sense of place. I adjusted my search parameters. “Office”, “Desk”, “Vintage office”, “Vintage desk”, and other combinations of the words office and desk. Finally I hit upon this image [“Dark hallway leading to office”](https://unsplash.com/photos/TmzDwJAyQuA) and while most of the actual office wasn’t in my mental picture of what I wanted, the front of the desk, the frosted glass door, and the darkened hallway were perfect and very dramatic.

As soon as I saw the sharp delineation between the light frosted glass and the dark hallway, I knew I wanted to play with colours in the title. As you can see, I’ve put dark text on the light part, and light text on the dark part. I used the phone app canva to get my type right, and the font I used is called Glacial Indifference. It’s one of my favourite fonts.

Then I realised I had a problem: I had NO IDEA where to put the author’s and my name. I just couldn’t get it to work without unbalancing the whole image! In the end, I decided to add another element to the cover and come back to that problem later.

Using the phone app pixlr, I added a partial overlay of smoke (or fog, as it’s supposed to be in this case) to the bottom of the picture. It looked good and was relevant to the fic, so I kept it. Went back to canva and the problem of the names.

In the end I only partially solved it. My name and the author’s name are there for sure, but good luck trying to find my name, as it’s mostly hidden by a shadow. The only reason you can see it at all is because of the smoke/fog. But the author’s name is very obvious, and that’s more important to me to be honest.

Then, the last step. Back to pixlr, and it was time to Adjust The Everything. I can’t remember what I did, but I know I resisted the urge to use the filter “Peter” (extremely strong of me), and instead went at it manually. The end result is quite dark and dramatic. I enjoy that.

  
  


  
  


Editing with this microphone is NOT a horrible nightmare, and that’s very new! One of the things that I’ve been trying this prolific season is adjusting my thoughts around editing, taking it from something that I do because I have to, to something I actively enjoy. I have a [spotify playlist of classical music](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0wAvhk1hVxapCDsaNaQwxl) that I play in the background as I edit (you can find it linked here), and I’ve been doing a lot of my editing out of the house, in my favourite coffee shops and in the library. It’s helped. But the thing that’s helped the most has undoubtedly been the crisp and clear quality of Will’s audio. It’s just easier to listen to!

Editing wise, my voice is very quiet, so I have to amplify the volume, or even at 100% I can’t hear myself with enough clarity to be useful. I then went through and did visual edits, normalised to -4...whatever that means. It works for me. Makes me not too soft, but not too loud. It keeps me consistent through multiple podfics, too, which I think is neat.

For once I beta listened to my pod, and it’s good I did. I’d repeated the line “some of us have work to do”, and the ending had me saying “the end” in various strange voices as I scrolled back on my computer to the bit with the title and author, as by the time I reached the end, I’d completely forgotten what it was called.

I still don’t know how to pronounce “CaesarVulpes” and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.

  
  


Music wise, I wanted something… soft, a little bit sad, a little bit sexy. I hit my spotify favs and found nothing. Mostly because most of my spotify favs aren’t actually my ACTUAL fav songs. Those I download. I had much more success when I went looking through my phone’s downloads. Flower Face seemed obvious in retrospect.

  
  


Originally I was going to use a different song from the same album, but in the end decided on [Hangman Hands](https://open.spotify.com/track/7edGiuUU0fxyDUoOC40F5Y) because it matched the cadence of this fic very well. To choose the song, I put each song I was considering on by turns and then played the introduction to the podfic. The one that fit the best, I used.

Other contenders, eliminated for being better suited to hypothetical (but currently nonexistent) future projects:

[Fire Escape by Half Moon Run](https://open.spotify.com/track/3qLV77PV5HtmEFR9A8Sx6u)

[Sleeping Season by Flower Face](https://open.spotify.com/track/3I78YlwRXqvtZtu2pDN9H1)

[Honey and Milk by Flower Face](https://open.spotify.com/track/2gslfQIvBjRT2mZlTCHdM0)

  
  


Last but not least, posting. I always feel…Concerned about posting. I don’t like the minutes or hours after where I feel terribly like no one notices or cares about my work. This passes with time (and comments. Comments help). Nevertheless, posting is always daunting.

It doesn’t take me long to post. Copy and paste my template in, then change all the information. I usually have four tabs up as I post. The new work page, the original text, my podfic files page and my cover files page. I don’t bother with streaming, as it is complicated, and I amn just…….a little creacher. Thatse It . I Canot change this.

  
  


Catch up with me later today as I post another fic with this exact plot! (they were both fills for the same kink meme prompt, and I love them)


	3. Podfic of Unscheduled by J Quadrifrons

Vital statistics:  
[Link to podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21545710)  
10MB  
00:14:19

This fic was both less and more involved than the one that came before. I struggled a lot to find music for it, in the end settling for something that didn’t match exactly but was Good Enough.

Recording wise, this was super duper fun. I’ve been trying to make Distinct Voices for my characters, and this podfic was one where I got to go a bit wild. I really Enjoy Peter’s voice. And Jon’s to an extent, though I have to be careful because I often find myself going too deep and dipping into Not Jon territory. I guess TMA podfic is about finding my middle range! And also not being afraid of my higher tones. Martin in particular shines if I allow his voice to go high. That’s something I’ll be exploring more in me next podfics, reports on that later.

The thing I’ve really found while recording both this fic and chapter one’s fic is that recording paired fic is really fun! Seeing where things are similar, and where things are different, how I perform similar lines in a different way with different atmospheres. This fic feels a little darker to me than the one before, but its tone is somehow more upbeat. It’s interesting to note that a good application of levity or humour can make the tone of something more sinister.

And now the cover!

This cover took me ages. I wont expand on it for _too_ long, because honestly it’s not interesting. I just couldn't find anything that I really liked! The theme for this cover was fallen paper, like paper that had been swept off the desk and left to fall on the ground. Finding the appropriate graphic was...hellish. I couldn’t find any paper in motion, and my searches kept suggesting pictures of autumn leaves and origami, entirely missing the point. I also wanted to do something with torn paper, because I like torn paper. It’s cool.

For this post, I used a canva template, and then messed around with it til it was unrecognisable. THEN I realised that the template wasn’t square and died a bit on the inside. I fixed that afterwards. I like my covers square, I just DO. This cover isn’t quite as symmetrical a I usually like, but it works. The font I used is Sansitation Light. Idk if I’ll use it again. It’s a perfectly serviceable sans serif font, readable, but it’s not a favourite.

The best part of editing this came after I did all the typesetting.

I took the cover to pixlr and cropped it to shape, and was Very Annoyed, because the “ripped paper” was a blinding white that I didn’t like to look at. But every filter I tried either radically shifted the pink-red-brown of the left of the cover as well as the white paper on the right, or it shifted the colours of the left hand side and didn’t do anything at all to the right. In the end I settled on using one of the radical change filters, and then I realised I could erase the filter’s effects from wherever I wanted! I was just bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t get a clear line between the filtered white paper and the unfiltered colour, when I noticed that erasing the very top of the now-yellowed paper left it white and looking like someone has ripped expensive cardstock. I liked that. Kept it.

And then I applied an overlay adding “water” drop marks to the dropped paper because...Listen, someone in the server made a comment, and I thought it was very funny. So that’s a thing now.

  
  


Editing this went quickly and easily. Not a nightmarish hellscape, therefore enjoyable.

I had the biggest urge to use [Bitches by tove lo](https://open.spotify.com/track/0S0rlh59DhpPheILyXYX76) as my music, but it didn’t really set the mood correctly. Ended up using [in the land by Nicole Dollanganger](https://open.spotify.com/track/5ErusXXEuWDcthHaAHl9hU), which is a song of hers that I don’t particularly enjoy, but it had a line abut the tape recorder being on and I was like. Nice. (Magnus Archives fic, tape recorders are a Thing) I took out the fics summary from the introduction so we could hear that line, then quickly faded the song out because it gets pretty...extreme after the next line. I also tend to associate Flower Face and Nicole Dollanganger together, and as I used Flower Face in this podfic’s partner, I felt like it was a match. I didn't include more of the song at the end because... Yeah, it's probably more graphic than the actual fic.  
  
My cover art embedding thing may or may not work? I don't actually know. The computer I'm currently using has like NO storage space, I've deleted as much as I can off it, but it's still basically only got room for a text editor, audacity, my ftp thing, and four r five medium sized podfics. I usually use itunes to embed cover art, and without it I'm lost. Sometimes my new way works? Sometimes it doesn't? One time it thought a watersports fic was [a slim dusty song](https://open.spotify.com/track/6jHBKCN0A4nYI8Y6RZ5vBj)? Listen man idk


End file.
